Moe Sorrento, 53, makes his living restoring vintage slot machines out of a converted two-car garage in southern Ohio, his workbench permanently dusted with metal shavings and sticky with old machine oil. He only showed up to the volunteer fire department’s annual chili cookoff because his childhood buddy, the fire chief, begged him to bring his famous smoked jalapeno toppings, and he owed the guy a favor for helping him haul a 1972 Bally slot up three flights of stairs for a private collector last winter. He’s wearing grease-stained Carhartts and steel-toe boots, a thin scar curling across the knuckle of his left hand from when a spring popped out of a 1980s Double Diamond model and sliced him open last month. He’s leaning against a splintered pine picnic table, half listening to a retired farmer ramble about his new zero-turn lawn tractor, already mentally mapping the list of parts he needs to order when he gets back to the shop, planning to duck out in 10 minutes flat.
She walks over holding a chipped ceramic bowl, and he recognizes her immediately as Lena, wife of the new county commissioner who ran on fixing the potholes along State Route 7 and hasn’t touched a single one since he took office six months prior. She’s wearing a faded Ohio State flannel and scuffed work boots, her dark hair pulled back in a loose braid, a smudge of chili powder dusting her left cheek. She steps too fast, tripping over the handle of a cooler at her feet, and sloshes a spoonful of beef chili straight onto the toe of his boot. She freezes, mumbles an apology, grabs a handful of paper napkins off the table, and kneels down to wipe it off before he can protest. Her shoulder brushes his shin when she leans in, and he catches a whiff of vanilla and cedar shampoo over the thick hickory smoke and chili fumes hanging in the air.
He tenses up immediately. His dad cheated on his mom three times before she filed for divorce when he was 12, and he’s never so much as flirted with a married woman, even the ones whose husbands are known deadbeats everyone in town gossips about over coffee at the diner. He mumbles that it’s fine, steps back a full foot, wraps his hand tighter around his plastic beer cup, and tries to think of a smooth excuse to leave. She stands up, huffs a small laugh, and says she’s been to his shop twice to buy replacement glass for her grandma’s old 1970s slot machine, and he never even looked up at her when she walked in the door. He blinks, draws a blank; he’s usually so focused on calibrating reels or rewiring circuits he barely notices most people who cross his threshold.
A group of kids runs past chasing each other with water balloons, and one hits her square in the shoulder, soaking the front of her flannel. She yelps, shivering a little, and says she parked her car on the other side of the lot, offers to buy him a beer at the dive bar down the road if he wants to walk her there and escape the chaos. He hesitates for half a second, thinking about the half-restored slot machine on his workbench due to a Cleveland collector at the end of the week, the rigid routine he’s stuck to for seven years that hasn’t shifted once since his ex-wife left him for an RV salesman. He nods, grabs his jacket off the picnic table bench. They cut across the gravel lot, she trips over a loose cinder block half-buried in the dirt, and grabs his bicep to steady herself, her palm lingering there for three full seconds, the heat of her hand seeping through the thin flannel of his shirt.
They stop by his pickup first, he keeps a stack of extra hoodies in the back seat for when he drives up north to pick up machines in the dead of winter. He pulls out a faded gray Ohio University hoodie, hands it to her. She slips it on, it’s too big, the sleeves hanging past her wrists. She leans in close, so close he can see flecks of gold in her hazel eyes, and says she’s been wanting to talk to him for months, thought he was the grumpy quiet guy who never smiled at anyone. He kisses her slow, she tastes like root beer and chili spice, her cold hand coming up to rest on the side of his neck. It’s the first kiss he’s had that didn’t feel obligatory or rushed in seven years.
Her phone buzzes in her jeans pocket, she pulls it out, sees her husband’s name on the screen, silences it, and shoves it back in her pocket without answering. She asks if he’s got any of the old slots set up to play in his shop, says she’s always wanted to win a jackpot on one of the 70s models. He says yeah, he’s got a 1976 Double Diamond by the front desk that pays out real quarters if you hit three in a row, pulls out his phone, types his address and cell number into her notes app, his thumb brushing hers when he hands the phone back. He watches her walk back toward the cookoff to tell her friend she’s leaving early, the hoodie sleeves bunched up around her wrists, and for the first time in seven years, he doesn’t immediately start making excuses to cancel plans he just made.
